1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for controlling brightness in a mobile device. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for automatically controlling the brightness of a display unit according to external illuminance.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the dramatic advancement in modern scientific techniques, a great variety of mobile devices have been widely popularized. Such mobile devices offer various inherent or optional functions or services such as a call function, a music play function, a short message or multimedia message service, a digital broadcasting service, a short-range wireless communication function, a wireless internet access function, or the like. Accordingly, because mobile devices offer many functions or services, useable time of mobile devices is becoming an important issue.
Meanwhile, recent mobile devices have an increasingly large size of a display unit. The increasingly larger display unit size causes an increase in power consumption of the display unit. Therefore, a technique for reducing power consumption by regulating the brightness of the display unit is required. A mobile device according to the related art measures external illuminance through an illuminance sensor and thereby regulates the brightness of the display unit. However, the illuminance sensor may often fail to detect external illuminance, depending on an angle between the mobile device and a light source. For example, the illuminance sensor can normally detect external illuminance at a right angle between the display unit (e.g., a surface on which the illuminance sensor is equipped) and the light source. However when the mobile device is inclined at a certain angle, the illuminance sensor detects external illuminance as a value smaller than the true external illuminance. In this case, a mobile device according to the related art incorrectly recognizes that external illuminance is reduced even though the external illuminance is not really reduced. Consequently, a mobile device according to the related art improperly reduces the brightness of the display unit.
Therefore, a need exists for a method and apparatus for controlling a brightness of a display unit according to external illuminance.
The above information is presented as background information only to assist with an understanding of the present disclosure. No determination has been made, and no assertion is made, as to whether any of the above might be applicable as prior art with regard to the present invention.